


Two Things

by ellorgast



Series: Monster Socks! [8]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Canon - Manga, Fluff, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:17:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two boys, two cats, two times of their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Things

There were only two things that made life okay. One of them was a boy with green eyes, full of fire and beauty, who had warm hands and laughed at all his jokes and wasn't afraid to push him in the snow and punch him ineffectually through his winter coat until he could no longer breathe for laughing. The other was a lean tortoiseshell cat with a ragged ear and yellow eyes whose purr sounded like a rusted hacksaw grinding through a log. The latter's name was Melon. 

Sasha could not stand to touch the animals. In a home for teenage boys who were deemed too much trouble to live near society (yet not quite enough to land them behind bars, though in some cases, they had already served that sentence), the only upside to being stranded in the great outdoors was that there were Real Live horses and goats and one surly cow and two dogs and three barn cats. Sasha shied away from all of them, as if he thought they might dirty his nails or try to eat his hair (as the cow did, in fact, once attempt to do). 

Jaden, born and raised in suburbia, enjoyed the novelty of real living creatures that were bigger than the designer dogs his neighbors had carried around. If he were not too busy wallowing in teenage angst, he may have admitted that he loved to rub the hard stubs of horn on the goats' heads, and feel the hot breath of the horses when they snorted through their gaping nostrils. But mostly, he liked Melon.

"That is the ugliest animal I've ever seen," Sasha informed him, as he squeezed onto the narrow step beside the other blond.

"She is not," Jaden snapped, offended for the cat who was pacing circles in his lap as he stroked her boney back. Her mottled fur was dusty, since she made her home in the warm loft above the barn. Her purring sounded like a mechanical malfunction. 

"She is. She's the color of puke and she's got patches of fur missing and she looks like someone busted her face."

"You're just jealous." Jaden rubbed his thumb over the ripped up ear. She leaned so forcefully into his hand that she tipped right over against his chest, sticking her upright rear in Sasha's face.

The blond cringed away, disgusted. "It's not like you can take her with you, you know."

They'd been planning their escape for weeks, biding their time until the woods were no longer impassible with snow. There were a lot of things that Jaden thought he could carry on his back, but a sweet barn cat who brought him half-eaten mice was not one of them. "I know."

***

There were only two things ruining his day. One was that the sky over Boston kept clouding, but refusing to rain. The unresolved tension of all that moisture sitting above his head, refusing to budge, was setting his teeth on edge. The other was that the green-eyed man at his side knew this, but kept making jabs at him anyway, like he was trying to make Jaden scream. He briefly considered throwing down his coffee cup and tackling the other blond to the ground, but people might mistake Sasha for a girl and think he was a crazy abusive boyfriend. Hell would have to be as cold as Kain's room before he was anything like that to Sasha again.

On top of it all, he had the nerve to deviate from Jaden's preferred route home, breaking away at a corner and giving him an expectant look. "Let's go this way."

Jaden considered turning his coffee cup into a projectile weapon. "Motherfucking--WHY? There's nothing down there."

"I want to check something out. Come on." Sasha started walking, just expecting Jaden to follow him without any say in the matter, and Jaden didn't know why he always went along anyway. All he wanted to do was get home and sulk in a corner with his guitar until either the storm broke or the rest of the house was as miserable as he was from listening to him pluck at the same chord until his fingers bled.

He was just contemplating strangling Sasha with his guitar strings when his fellow blond stopped walking, pointing at a cardboard box from a safe distance.

He froze as a ball of grey fluff popped up behind the edge of the box, huge staring eyes gazing up at him for a moment, before vanishing again. His mind barely registered the hand-written sign that said "kittens for sale" before he realized that Sasha had his wallet out. "They're six weeks old, and they have all their shots. They don't have any puke-colored ones, though, sorry."

Twenty minutes of indecision later, the coffee cup had been abandoned and he had his arms carefully wrapped around his bundled sweater, which was nervously purring like a motor. 

When Jaden got home, instead of retreating into his room with his guitar, he laid on the living room floor beside his new tabby kitten, and the two of them took turns attacking a rolled up sock.


End file.
